


Ghosts of Christmases Past

by Shadowlover



Category: Clue | Cluedo (Board Game)
Genre: Gen, Retrospective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:35:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowlover/pseuds/Shadowlover
Summary: The beginning of this story takes place in around 1912.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Ghosts of Christmases Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



> The beginning of this story takes place in around 1912.

What woke Miss Scarlett that Christmas morning was the light. She bounded out of bed, not caring that her room was freezing, to check that, yes, it really had snowed overnight.

After that first rush of enthusiasm, she dressed with care. Great Aunt would find fault with whatever she wore, of course; since her second husband died she had seemed to enjoy nothing more than being rude to Uncle John about all the things he should do differently to give Miss Scarlett a proper upbringing. The question was thus what impression she wanted to make on her Uncle's friends. 

It was particularly important this year, because it was the first time that she, rather than her Great Aunt, would be 'postman' after dinner and hand out the gifts, which she was more excited about than she was willing to admit.

She considered and discarded several approaches, eventually deciding on a dress that she didn’t usually like to wear because she felt it made her look younger than she was. She thought it more likely that she would hear interesting things if they all dismissed her as a child than if they thought of her as a young lady who needed sheltering.

Once she was dressed she skipped down to the kitchen to ask Mrs White if she would tie bows in the red ribbons she liked to wear in her pigtails - and to see if she could acquire an early share of some Christmas treats.

She couldn’t resist peeking into the lounge on the way past. It was so beautiful! The whole of Tudor House had been decorated, of course; but it was the lounge, crowned by a majestic tree whose red ornaments Miss Scarlett had helped to make, where Mrs White had outdone herself.

This time, though, Miss Scarlett did not have a chance to admire the room. Her gaze was naturally drawn to the piles of presents underneath the tree, and what met her eyes was a horrible sight. Rather than the tidy piles of gifts she was expecting, the presents were sprawled in leaning heaps, and detached tags lay forlornly scattered about. She gave a little squeak and hurried over, unable to help herself.

Her first thought was that it might have been the cat, but when she started collecting up the scattered tags it was quickly clear that they had been cleanly cut away rather than torn off. And if the cat had done it, surely the tags would have mostly stayed near the presents they had once been attached to, apart from perhaps a few that the cat had played with.

The most important thing was neither who had done it nor why, however. That, Miss Scarlett thought to herself, was to get the mess sorted out and the tags reunited with the gifts they belonged on.

The first thing she did was reattach the tags to the gifts she was giving to everyone else, since she knew exactly which those were. She was annoyed that the ribbons she had used to attach the tags had been cut, because she could probably have saved most of them after they had been unwrapped. 

Also, she knew which gifts were the ones for her, if not who they were all from, and that the large box was for Mrs White to take home on Boxing Day, and that was the only gift for her.

Now, the piles had originally been sorted by the person receiving the gifts, and it seemed like they had fallen over rather than been mixed up. She was tempted to assume the piles were broadly correct, therefore, which was supported by there being one of her gifts in each pile, but something made her suspicious.

She would ask Mrs White to relabel hers next, she decided. And then she could get the ribbons in her hair tied and that snack she had been hoping for as well.

A little later, she knew she’d been wise not to make assumptions, as Mrs White had discovered that two of the presents from her had been exchanged so they were not in the right piles. 

They had worked out which gifts were from Lieutenant Mustard - the ones with extremely precise corners and immaculate folds. And Mrs White had identified all the gifts intended for Deacon Green - it seemed that everyone was giving him a bottle.

Miss Scarlett picked out the gifts to and from her Great Aunt next; Mrs Peacock had used the most ostentatious paper, and all the gifts to her were things suitable for a lady, which could mostly be told by the shape of them, and in one case by the smell, because no one would give scented soaps to a man.

The gifts for the Professor from her Uncle and his friends were heavy, flat and rectangular; Miss Scarlett thought they were probably books. And the gifts from Deacon Green were the badly-wrapped ones where the string was coming off.

She had things almost sorted, finally. There was an extra tag labelled ‘To Mrs White’, and a small present with no tag which she assumed went together, though doubtless her Great Aunt would find it scandalous that someone had sent a personal gift to the cook!

Something that had been bothering her was that the gifts from her Uncle had been the hardest to relabel. One of them had been sorted into the pile from Mrs Peacock to start with, for example, because the paper was just like the kinds she had used. Another had been wrapped in just Lieutenant Mustard’s style, which must have taken a lot of work. It was almost like he’d known the mixup was going to happen and set out to make it awkward…

~~~

Looking at the blood-covered billiard table and the body lying on it, Miss Scarlett laughed tiredly and rolled her eyes. “Very funny, Uncle John. We’ll be at dinner when you’re ready to tell us what’s going on.” 

“It really isn’t funny any more,” Reverend Green told him, “if it ever was.” 

“I thought you might have grown out of this sort of thing by now, old chap,” Colonel Mustard added as he followed them.

Mrs Peacock waited only long enough to sniff and add “It’s in terrible taste, I know that much!” before joining them in the dining room where Mrs White was waiting with the roast ready to serve.


End file.
